The "Great Unraveling" continues.

So not Trump or Giuliani. Got it.

 

Rudy Giuliani’s DC law license is suspended
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/07/rudy-giulianis-dc-law-license-is-suspended-.html

To be determined.........

How federal prosecutors are pursuing Rudy Giuliani
https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/22/politics/rudy-giuliani-investigation-fara/index.html
Trump Organization, CFO indicted on tax fraud charges
https://apnews.com/article/trump-or...berg-charges-ad7350d4f85f295eeb753658e786cd88
Georgia DA Interviews Witnesses About Trump’s Call to ‘Find’ Votes
https://www.thedailybeast.com/georg...investigates-donald-trumps-call-to-find-votes
Jan. 6 Select Committee Probe Expands To Trump And Top Officials In A Wave Of Demands
https://www.npr.org/2021/08/25/1030933461/jan-6-committee-trump-investigation

 

Capitol Police officers face discipline for selfies with rioters, internal documents show

A Capitol Police officer facing disciplinary action told investigators that he posed for a photo with a suspect during the Jan. 6 riot in order to identify him later.

But the officer never shared that plan with his supervisor, the Capitol Police’s investigations unit or the FBI. It was only when the FBI contacted the Capitol Police about the officer’s photo in Facebook posts they were using to obtain an arrest warrant that the officer filled in his supervisors, according to internal investigation documents obtained by McClatchy.

The officer, whose name is redacted from the documents, is one of six facing disciplinary action related to the Jan. 6 riot when supporters of former President Donald Trump mobbed the Capitol building as lawmakers were certifying the 2020 presidential election results.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article254245798.html

The infestation that is Trumpery is everywhere.

 

Trump Org CFO Expects More Indictments, Lawyer Says

The lawyer representing Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer, is prepared for prosecutors to hand down even more criminal indictments in addition to the 15 fraud charges he’s already facing.

Bryan Skarlatos, Weisselberg’s attorney, told the New York State Supreme Court during a pre-trial hearing on Monday that “We have strong reason to believe there could be other indictments coming,” per CNN.

Weisselberg has been slapped with 15 criminal charges ranging from tax fraud, conspiracy, grand larceny, and falsification of records in what Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance’s office alleges to be a 15-year long tax evasion scheme with the Trump Organization, which was also indicted in the criminal case against the executive.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/trump-org-cfo-expects-more-indictments-lawyer-says

This case is all about whether prosecutors can put enough pressure on Big Al to spill the beans on Don's criminal behavior.

 

Gun Couple Might Lose Their Law Licenses

In a recent filing to the Missouri Supreme Court, the state’s chief disciplinary counsel, Alan D. Pratzel asked the court to revoke the pair’s licenses to practice law in the state over their (now-pardoned) convictions. He argued that their crimes demonstrated an “indifference to public safety” and argued the two displayed signs of “moral turpitude.” Pratzel asked the court to suspend the McCloskey’s law licenses indefinitely and ban them from reapplying for at least six months.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/prime...er-20-2021-gun-couple-might-lose-law-licenses

 

John Kerry says the U.S. can recover from Trump’s ‘sheer idiocy’ on climate change

U.S. climate envoy John Kerry on Tuesday called out President Donald Trump’s lack of climate action during his term in the White House. Kerry also warned that damage being caused by climate change is in some cases irreversible.

“I refuse to accept the idea that the sheer idiocy and lack of scientific rationale and legitimate economic rationale or even political rationale for Donald Trump pulling out — I refuse to believe that creates something that’s irreparable for people of good faith in good conscience who want to do what’s right,” Kerry said, speaking at an event during Climate Week NYC.

Trump removed the United States from the Paris Climate Accord, an action that President Joe Biden reversed earlier this year. Kerry said the U.S. will only be able to regain the world’s trust through action.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/21/joh...om-trumps-sheer-idiocy-on-climate-change.html

 

It seemed like a good idea at the time. I place no bounds on human stupidity, it avoids having to concoct conspiracy theories.

 

WASHINGTON — House Democrats introduced legislation Tuesday aimed at preventing abuses of presidential power in what supporters of the measures say is largely a response to Donald Trump's actions as president.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., highlighted the Protecting Our Democracy Act during a news conference alongside its chief sponsor, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

"We have to codify this, turn it into law, so that no president of whatever party can ever assume that he or she has the power to usurp the power of the other branches of government," Pelosi said. "And it is specific in its remedies," adding the bill will be a protection against "against future abuse."
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/co...tail-presidential-powers-after-trump-n1279704

We definitely need to stop a prez's ability to so easily abuse his power before another Orange Fraud dupes enough Repubs to get elected.

Repairing the Rule of Law: An Agenda for Post-Trump Reform
https://www.lawfareblog.com/repairing-rule-law-agenda-post-trump-reform

 

Yet another crucial piece of the Trumpian conspiracy to steal a second term in office has been made public.

CNN on Tuesday morning published a copy of the so-called “Eastman Memo,” a two-page document from conservative lawyer John Eastman advising then-President Donald Trump’s legal team on a strategy to overturn the election results from the House floor.

Eastman proposed that, during the Jan. 6 certification of the states’ Electoral College votes, then-Vice President Mike Pence shepherd Congress through a multi-step process, in which he would take the vote-counting process into his own hands by acknowledging “multiple slates” of electors from seven contested states. Pence would then discard those disputed states’ electors before tallying up the final vote. (In reality, no state legislature had sent Congress competing slates of electors.)

In one outcome envisioned by the memo, this partial count would give Trump the win. In another, Democrats objected to the maneuver, at which point each state’s House delegation would be given one vote on the outcome, again giving Trump a slim victory. Eastman also posited that a filibuster from a Senate Republican during the proceedings could create a “stalemate,” allowing state legislatures “more time to weigh in to formally support the alternate slate of electors.”
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/...mo-fits-into-trumps-election-theft-conspiracy

 

Trump Campaign Knew Lawyers’ Voting Machine Claims Were Baseless, Memo Shows

Two weeks after the 2020 election, a team of lawyers closely allied with Donald J. Trump held a widely watched news conference at the Republican Party’s headquarters in Washington. At the event, they laid out a bizarre conspiracy theory claiming that a voting machine company had worked with an election software firm, the financier George Soros and Venezuela to steal the presidential contest from Mr. Trump.

But there was a problem for the Trump team, according to court documents released on Monday evening.

By the time the news conference occurred on Nov. 19, Mr. Trump’s campaign had already prepared an internal memo on many of the outlandish claims about the company, Dominion Voting Systems, and the separate software company, Smartmatic. The memo had determined that those allegations were untrue.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/21/us/politics/trump-dominion-voting.html

 

A former federal judge on Tuesday night pulled back the curtain on the crucial early January days when Vice President Mike Pence was deciding whether or not to steal Donald Trump a second term.

Pence, in the days before the Jan. 6 certification of Biden’s Electoral College victory, had been pressured by Trump to listen to John Eastman, a conservative lawyer who’d written a memo arguing that Pence could take the counting process into his own hands and simply ignore certain states’ votes, among other options.

But Pence sought out his own advisors as well, reportedly including former Vice President Dan Quayle. He was also advised by Michael Luttig, a former judge who served on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals for 15 years, until 2006, Luttig said Tuesday night.

In a Twitter thread, the former judge recalled a blunt piece of advice: He told Pence, he said, that the vice president “had no choice on January 6, 2021, but to accept and count the Electoral College votes as they had been cast and properly certified by the states.”
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/...pence-to-ignore-trumpian-scheme-to-steal-vote

By appearance it looks like Pence was considering Trump's request to help steal the election but was advised he had no power to do so.

 

Jan. 6 committee subpoenas 4 from Trump's inner circle

The select panel investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection is issuing subpoenas to four current and former top aides to President Donald Trump, including his most recent chief of staff Mark Meadows.

The committee issued its first subpoenas on Thursday to Meadows; former Pentagon official and longtime House Intelligence Committee aide Kash Patel; former top White House adviser Steve Bannon; and longtime Trump social media chief Dan Scavino. It marks a turning point in the investigation as lawmakers begin homing in on Trump's effort to overturn the 2020 election results.
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/...ubpoenas-four-from-trumps-inner-circle-513989

My take is those receiving subpoenas will try to delay in the hope the Repubs take back the House and drop the investigation.

 

NEW YORK (AP) — Ferocious tantrums. Family gossip. Petty nicknames.

Stephanie Grisham, once a White House press secretary and chief of staff to first lady Melania Trump, is out with a book next week that paints a deeply unflattering picture of Donald Trump — a man with a “terrifying” temper who ogled a young aide and tried to impress dictators while president, she writes.

Grisham, who holds the distinction of having never held a press briefing while serving as White House press secretary, charts her path from low-level press wrangler to the Trumps’ inner circles, and her gradual disillusionment with the family and eventual resignation following the Jan. 6 insurrection.

As have the many books critical of Trump, Grisham’s “I’ll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House” has drawn Trump’s ire. He bashed the book and its author in deeply personal terms, saying in a statement that Grisham was “paid by a radical left-leaning publisher to say bad and untrue things.”
https://apnews.com/article/donald-t...ment-royalty-25b7dbdaaafd46a5e95df14c7d2f3b39

Not that we didn't already know he is deranged, but..........

 

Disbarment For Couping?
A nonpartisan election integrity group is demanding an investigation into whether John Eastman, the conservative legal scholar who mapped out a potential plan for then-Vice President Mike Pence to steal the 2020 election for Trump, engaged in professional misconduct.

• The States United Democracy Center sent a letter to the California bar association on Monday requesting that the state bar examine whether Eastman “violated his ethical obligations as an attorney by filing frivolous claims, making false statements and engaging in deceptive conduct.”
• The letter’s signatories included two former California Supreme Court justices plus an ex-GOP governor and an Obama official.
• “Is it now a disbarrable offense to engage in political speech, First Amendment protected?” Eastman asked in response to the group’s complaint while hinting that he might fire back with a defamation suit.
• The bar complain comes as other Trumpland lawyers, including Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, face bar investigations for misusing the courts to overturn the election.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/morning-memo/john-eastman-bar-complaint

 

Senate report gives new details of Trump efforts to use Justice Dept. to overturn election

A Senate report on President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election offers new details about an Oval Office confrontation between Trump and the Justice Department, revealing the extent to which government lawyers threatened to resign en masse if the president removed his attorney general.

The interim report by the Senate Judiciary Committee was issued Thursday. While Republicans on the panel offered their counter-findings, arguing that Trump did not subvert the justice system to remain in power, the majority report by the Democrats offers the most detailed account to date of the struggle inside the administration’s final, desperate days.

The report underscores the gaping political divide that has emerged in this country over one of the most basic functions of government — conducting free and fair elections. Democrats charge Trump nearly provoked a constitutional crisis, but for the steady hands of senior Justice Department officials; Republicans say Trump was “faithful” to his sworn duty as president in seeking assurances about voter integrity.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nati...1712d4-2769-11ec-8d53-67cfb452aa60_story.html

 

4 Days In January: The Story Of Trump’s Ouster Of Atlanta’s Top Federal Prosecutor

It was getting late in the day on Sunday, Jan. 3 in the Oval Office. Trump was arguing with top Justice Department officials over whether to fire the attorney general in a bid to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The conversation was interrupted, however: Trump wanted to make a call.

“Get Bobby Christine on the phone,” Trump thundered to an administrative assistant. The move bewildered Richard Donoghue, the deputy attorney general. “I didn’t understand where he was going with this,” Donoghue recalled in testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Less than two hours after the Sunday meeting concluded, Donoghue would be on the phone with U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, BJay Pak, telling him that he needed to resign immediately, and to do so quietly.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckr...mps-ouster-of-atlantas-top-federal-prosecutor

Nixon-like corruption.

 

Committee Uncovers Evidence that Trump Concealed Millions in Losses, Hid Debts, and Received Millions from Foreign Governments at Trump Hotel

“The documents provided by GSA raise new and troubling questions about former President Trump’s lease with GSA and the agency’s ability to manage the former President’s conflicts of interest during his term in office when he was effectively on both sides of the contract, as landlord and tenant,” the Chairs wrote.

“Specifically, the Committee found that President Trump provided misleading information about the financial situation of the Trump Hotel in his annual financial disclosures; received undisclosed preferential treatment from a foreign bank on a $170 million loan to the hotel that the President personally guaranteed; accepted millions of dollars in emoluments from foreign governments without providing an accounting of the money’s source or purpose; concealed hundreds of millions of dollars in debts from GSA when bidding on the Old Post Office Building lease; and made it impossible for GSA to properly enforce the lease’s conflict-of-interest restrictions by engaging in opaque transactions with other affiliated entities. As discussed in this letter, this new evidence raises many questions that require further investigation and action by the Committee.”
https://oversight.house.gov/news/pr...-trump-concealed-millions-in-losses-hid-debts

 

Trump doing what he does best, line his pockets with other people's money.

 

WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump provided “misleading information about the financial situation” of his hotel in Washington while he was in office, according to the House Oversight and Reform Committee.

The committee, which recently obtained documents from the General Services Administration, found that Trump reported his hotel in downtown D.C. brought in $150 million in income while he served in the White House, but the hotel actually incurred more than $70 million in losses.

“By filing these misleading public disclosures, President Trump grossly exaggerated the financial health of the Trump Hotel,” the committee said Friday in a news release.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/co...-d-c-hotel-finances-house-panel-says-n1281103

 

True. But more than that he committed fraud.

“By filing these misleading public disclosures, President Trump grossly exaggerated the financial health of the Trump Hotel,”

The same kind of fraud Mike Cohen testified to under oath. https://thehill.com/homenews/admini...xes-would-reveal-wealth-is-not-as-significant

 

And unless the Biden Admin decides to do the right thing and follow the rule of law regardless of politics, Trump is going to get a second bite of the apple.

 

This is from Congress' report........."when he applied for the lease of the Old Post Office Building in 2011, Trump concealed certain debts from the GSA......and submitted paperwork with numerous accounting weaknesses and deficiencies."

 

The congressional committee found that while Trump claimed he made $156M from leasing the DC hotel he actually lost $73M from 2016 to 2020.

 

When Trump first applied to lease the Old Post Office Building in 2011 for his hotel, he also provided the federal government with information that the committee said “appeared to conceal certain debts.” Records show Trump specifically didn’t show outstanding balances for properties he owned in other major cities like New York, Chicago and Las Vegas, the panel said.

 

Judge Dismisses Georgia Lawsuit That Election Truthers Were Watching Closely

A Georgia judge on Wednesday dismissed a lingering lawsuit over the 2020 election that had attracted significant attention from Trump-aligned election truthers.

The dismissal came a day after lawyers for Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s (R) office explained in detail, again, that investigators had found no evidence of counterfeit ballots in Georgia. Plaintiffs had sought to gain physical access to Atlanta voters’ absentee ballots in order to continue to push the argument that the election was corrupted.

During the final weeks of Donald Trump’s presidency, Justice Department officials were under pressure to pursue one of the conspiracy theories that formed the basis of the suit — alleged wrongdoing that Trump’s campaign said resulted in fraudulent ballots being counted in Fulton County, home to Atlanta.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/...-that-election-truthers-were-watching-closely